Family time

I'm sure many of you are like me where you get all interested in someone's blog while they are in China, and then when the people get home they get too busy and they hardly ever blog anymore and you, the reader, start going through blog withdrawals. I promise I will try to keep blogging with lots of pictures so those of you who are interested in following Chloe and Lia's story can do so.

So to update you all, the last couple of days, or should I say nights, have been particularly long and tiring! Chloe's all mixed up as to when is day and when is night obviously due to the twelve hour time change. Last night (Sun). was the first night we actually got her to sleep through most of the night. I ended up putting our air mattress in Chloe's room so that if she got really fussy I could be right there to calm her down. She slept for about three hours in her crib and then she began to fuss, so I ended up getting her out and laying her on the mattress with me and she settled right down and went back to sleep. Long story short, she ended up sleeping with one of us all night. She seemed to need to be actually physically touching us to be able to be at peace. We think that she's just having some anxiety right now with the huge time shift and also the huge change in her routine/everything she's ever known. I think she needs to touch us to know that we're still there and that everything hasn't changed again. We said we would probably be the same way if one morning someone picked us up and took us away from everything we'd ever known. I figure this is just something we need to get through right now and soon, when she's feeling more secure, things will be different.

Dan's twin sister Diane and her family came to see Chloe last night. We just had pizza and hung out. I've included some cute pictures of Chloe with her cousins Maegan, Makayla and Lauren as well as Uncle Jim.

Lia continues to be enthralled with her baby sister. She's been a huge help! She likes to give Chloe her bottle.

One other interesting thing is that last night when Chloe was particularly restless, I told Dan maybe she needed to go pee pee. So three times we held her over the toilet and took her diaper off and she did her trick. I think she's just not used to sleeping with a diaper and that's part of what makes her uncomfortable at night as well. So I have to figure out what to do with this whole potty scene. I think if I could learn her signals I could definitely have her potty trained by the time she's a year. We'll see. I'll let you know how it goes.

The trip home

Well our day began at 3:15 a.m. on Thursday morning (China time which is 3:15 p.m. on Wed. afternoon EST time). We had to have our bags outside our doors by 4:30 a.m and we left on the bus for the airport at 5:30 a.m. Our flight was supposed to leave at 8:20 a.m. The check in lines at the airport were very long and we had to go through a lengthy security search but finally we were on the plane. We sat for about fifteen minutes or so before the captain came on and said the front tire had a cut in it so they were going to have to have it replaced - obviously for safety reasons. He said it would take about an hour to do this. We were wondering what would happen with our flight in Tokyo because we only had an hour and fifteen minute layover there. So after about an hour of waiting on the plane, the captain came back on and said the new tire was there but they had to wait for the outside contractor to arrive to change it. He said this would take about another hour. At this point, we realized that we were definitely not going to make our connecting flight in Tokyo. We ended up leaving Guangzhou at 10:30 a.m. and arrived Tokyo at about 3:15 p.m. Luckily even though we had missed our connecting flight, Northwest had booked us onto the next flight which was leaving in about half an hour. So we had to book through the airport and the security checkpoint (always seems to take forever with those) and we made it to the next gate just in time. We weren't sure if our luggage would make the new flight or not, but it did. YEAH!! The flight was eleven hours long and Chloe and Lucy both did really well. Chloe never even cried once during the whole trip. She slept for about five hours total and just sat on our laps and ripped up the magazines the rest of the time.

We arrived at the airport by my parent's house about 4:15 p.m. and then spent about another 45 minutes going through the immigration process. When we finally got all done our families were waiting to meet us. Lia was SO EXCITED to see her momma and daddy again and to finally meet Chloe!!!! We went back to my parents house and had dinner, took showers, etc. and then Dan's parents drove us home (about two hour drive) about 7 p.m. So we walked in the door of our own house about 9 p.m. Chloe slept in the car We went to bed about 10 p.m and Chloe slept till 1:30 a.m. and then she was up till about 4:00 a.m. At that time Dan started walking around with her and he would get her to sleep but when he would try to lay her down in her crib she would wake up and start crying again. He ended up laying on the couch with her laying on his chest and she slept that way from 6 a.m. till 10 a.m. We finally woke her up then although this was difficult to do because she just wanted to keep sleeping! She took another nap from 12:30 - 3:30 pm. this afternoon and we finally had to wake her up because we wanted her to sleep tonight. Of course for Chloe and Dan and I, the daytime here is our night in China so no wonder Chloe wanted to keep sleeping. Lia went to play with a neighbor friend for an hour or so and she watched a movie while Dan and I had a little rest.

Tonight we went out for Chinese for dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant by our house. Our very favorite waiter, Jack, got to see Chloe. Jack, if you remember from an earlier post, had helped me translate all Chloe's documents when we got our referral so he was excited to finally meet her! We let Chloe suck on an orange slice and she seemed to really love it. The expressions on her face were cute so I've included a couple of pics of that as well.

Many of you wanted to know how Lia is doing now that she is finally a big sister. She's doing great and just loving being with Chloe as much as she can. She keeps saying, "she's so cute!". And she's said more than once, "finally at last I am a big sister!". It's so sweet!!! Lia is a big help too - she's already given Chloe her bottle, helped feed her some baby food, gotten diapers for us, etc. I'm including some pics of the two of them from tonight.

Well I need to get to bed because I'm sure Chloe will be up a lot tonight as well.

We're home!!!!

We've been up for over 30 hours right now so we're exhausted but VERY happy to be home! I'll post more about our trip home tomorrow when I get some sleep : ))

Things are looking good for tomorrow

Hopefully this is my last post from China! Just wanted to let you all know that the flood waters have receeded here on Shamain Island and the worst of the typhoon seems to have passed so we should be ok to fly out tomorrow. Our luggage has to be outside our door by 4:30 a.m. which means we need to be up by about 3:45 a.m. Our bus leaves for the airport at 5:30 a.m. So it's going to be a LONG day with our 18 hours of flying. Thanks so much for all your prayers. We can't wait to be home!!!

Typhoon lagoon

Last night while we were laying in bed (after having gotten up with Chloe for the umteenth time), we were listening to the howling wind blowing away. This morning when we got up we got a chance to see what it was like out there. There is a LOT of standing water. The hotel has sandbags by the doors to keep out the water. Some of the pictures are from our room on the 14th floor and some of them are from when Dan went down to the main floor and took pictures. Two of the pictures you see are of what were the swimming pools the other day. You can just see the ladders sticking out on the one picture and the other picture all you can see are the palm branches that are around the pool.

We're supposed to go to the American Consulate today for our swearing in ceremony with the girls. Hopefully all the water in the roads won't make this too difficult. We're riding in a big bus so I think it will be fine. Michelle, our guide, said she hoped to have more information today about whether or not we'd have any problems with our flight out tomorrow. Keep praying!

Red Couch Pictures

All of you who have adopted before and stayed at the White Swan hotel know that it is customary to take the famous "red couch pictures". Today was our day to do the pictures and they turned out pretty well. Chloe wore the same little Chinese outfit that Lia wore when she had her red couch pictures taken. It's a little big on Chloe but it worked fine. The other little girl you see in these pictures is Kate, the other baby who was adopted from Chloe's orphanage. Kate tried to get Chloe's shirt off at one point which was pretty hilarious. Chloe didn't seem to mind at first but you can see from the progression of the pictures that after a bit she started to get worried. It was a great day!

Please pray about the weather

We heard this morning that a typhoon is going to be blowing into Guangzhou tomorrow (Wed.) and possibly Thursday. The locals say that a typhoon is a really bad storm but typically they blow in and out quite quickly. Supposedly flights will not leave the Guangzhou airport if there is a typhoon or at the very least they will be delayed. Our flight leaves very early on Thursday morning so please pray that the weather holds and we can leave without a problem. We can't wait to get home and see our Lia!!!!

White Swan pictures

Today we had our first real free day and since Guangzhou is really hot, we decided to head for the pool. The White Swan has a lovely tropical oasis kind of pool so Dan and I took Chloe for her first swim. She really seemed to like it! The other pictures are from around the hotel and also from the Swan room playroom. Chloe is really enjoying all the new things she's seeing!